The People You Meet at the Grocery Store ...( Part One of a Week's Worth)

The People you meet, there, and in your home, office, school and on the street.

Maybe not a Coalition? but Rainbowed.

I woke up twice, today. The first time the clock read 1:12 and my eyes saw 7:12. Each time I got out of bed, I was aware of dreams with problematic (to me!) people. 2,000 years ago, a Babylonian writer compared a dream uninterpreted to a letter unopened. Not the experience I have. I recall some dreams completely and some dreams I retain but shards ... pieces from times long gone, maybe, or are they too frightening to recall. I'll leave it for those who voice:  "I need to know" or "I do know." Oh! I don't get caught up in whether I'm really here and typing (is this still called typing) letters to describe personalities as I take them in.

In my neighborhood growing up ... I can think of at least half a dozen ways of parsing knowledge:

1. For some the emphasis was on the power of the I. There were parents, for instance -- mostly men but women, somewhat less often, who would offer: I and You both know it because I say it and I'm in charge." or "While you're under my roof" or "Because I say so."
2. There was a similar type who didn't feel the tension between what they said and what you said, as they seamlessly recoiled from whatever you said ... as if it didn't exist. 
3. There were those who would retaliate or runoff when losing. 
4. I had great difficulty with those who would imagine that I or another was disagreeing just to be disagreeable.
5. That type had another related types that presented themselves as victims in a disagreement. They would either angrily cry (not the come-hither-be-with-me-I'm-lonely-and-sad cry) or seek rageful retaliation. But they always thought themselves the aggrieved party -- winning? or losing?
6. There was a small minority of folk who eschewed the acceptance of anything as incontrovertible knowledge. And they fell into two types: (1) Those who saw all knowing and/or belief as hopelessly valueless; and (2) Those with whom I strongly identified who felt strongly about their own thought-out and received beliefs but realized that others felt the same about their beliefs. Those, I called "skeptics." I know the term has been co-opted for questions of the existence of the Divine, but I think it applies outside that context.
7. There were also those who like an abusive spouse repeatedly fought tooth and nail and then made up, only to do it again and again. I remember a Hilda, I think her name was, daughter of refugees, who would beat you up and then say how sorry she was. I always wondered what went on in her home that set this serial attack-apology-attack cycle in motion.

Today's Sunday ... Yesterday was Saturday and I seemed to run into most of these types, and assuredly others. One was someone I hadn't seen in a long time who visited with her kids. Nothing was so important that he had to be fought against .... everything was open to consideration. Damn ... Room to breathe.

One misunderstood online how I was describing the previous interaction, thinking that I said that there had been some kind of discomfort that had been healed by the meeting. I explained that that was not the case and that perhaps I'd been less than clear in my description, she heard me and that was all good.

Funny. I have been in an ongoing discussion about my curious style of communicating. I don't like talking in a manner that breaches someone's confidentiality rights in public, even if they agree to it. I find it haughty and grandiose to criticize ("That was no good") or compliment ("That was great"), even about something so everyday and quotidian as food or a haircut or sweater or idea. I tend not to think that inside the sentence "I think you're a schmuck" the real emphasis is on "I think." I don't mind saying: "I don't like you" and have said it.

I remember when our kids were young, there was a psychologist (Ginott?) who wrote a book, advising people to criticize their child's behavior rather than their child. I'm cool with that, providing ... providing that the speaker isn't caught up in believing they have the absolute authority to judge the behavior. I have tried to train myself to report on how I feel in the presence of the behavior. "I don't seem to be able to get a word in and it makes me anxious and sad" as opposed to "I experience your verbal pragmatics as intrusive and self-preoccupied." Maybe, there's no difference. Who knows? Not me.

I do sense that the older I get, the deeper into the Last Quarter, the less I appreciate the knowers of the world ... tho, I have no doubt that I may betimes come across to some as "knowing." The Mother who visited me yesterday seems to intuitively sense that the best she could do with her kids was steer them ... kinda the way you steer a 5,000 pound 1966 Pontiac Bonneville. And when one was sad, she could pick the little one up and hold her.